


Across Frayed Wires

by olderbynow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: A Trope A Day Keeps The Doctor Away, But Maybe It Shouldn't, F/M, February Trope: Miscommunication, Jack's Mind Is A Scary Place, This Is What Panic Ficcing Looks Like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10023581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olderbynow/pseuds/olderbynow
Summary: Jack gets a phone call and completely misunderstands, much to his regret.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is what happens when I realise that it's the very last day of the month and I still have _nothing_ for this month's trope... I ask for help, get a brilliant suggestion from Whopooh and then write... not that. (But I will, because I adore it!)
> 
> Maybe this will teach me not to procrastinate until the last possible moment. (Spoiler alert: It won't. There is no fic in the world bad enough to do that. Not even this one.)

 

Phryne Fisher looked up from behind the bed where she had fallen (‘been thrown’ might be a more accurate description, Jack would muse later as he - very reluctantly - relived the moment), one end of a sheet wrapped somewhat haphazardly around her. “What on Earth...?”

In the doorway Jack shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I do apologise, Miss Fisher,” he said, his eyes fixed so firmly on a point on the wall behind her that she actually turned her head to see what he was looking at.

Which was nothing, generally. _Not her_ , more specifically.

“That’s quite alright, Jack,” she said, humour apparently having overcome shock, as her eyes drifted to the gun he was holding awkwardly in his right hand and not quite managing to hide. 

Under the other end of the sheet a throat was cleared in a manner that indicated that she was really the only person in the room who felt this was in any way ‘alright’, and Jack felt that he was forced to acknowledge the presence of the two naked, hairy legs sticking out from under the sheet.

He nodded rather pointlessly at them in apology.

“I’ll just…” he trailed off. He wanted very much to say “I’ll just go make arrangement to move to Perth, please excuse me,” but a sentence that long was clearly beyond him at the moment. “Goodbye.”

He stepped into the hallway and closed the door to her boudoir rather more forcefully than was strictly polite in his eagerness to end this humiliation.

Oh, he was going to _murder_ Hugh Collins.

*

Thirty minutes earlier:

Jack leaned back in his seat, rubbing his eyes roughly with the heels of his hands as he sighed loudly. He should be going home, this paperwork would still be here tomorrow.

But presumably then he’d just have to _do_ it tomorrow, so he might as well get it out of the way tonight. Not as if he had anything in particular to be going home to.

He thought of Miss Fisher’s parlour, of her whiskey and her smile and her… He shook his head, making more effort than anyone would ever appreciate to not let his mind wander down that particular path.

(In general, Jack’s efforts not to think about Miss Fisher went spectacularly unappreciated. If she knew about it, she probably wouldn’t be impressed, she might even be offended.

So maybe he should just…?

No!)

Deciding that paperwork was paperwork and he needed to do something physical (no, Jack! A bike ride, or maybe a long walk, ending in a cold shower) to distract himself, he stood up, and was reaching for his hat and coat when the telephone on his desk rang.

He sighed, giving his coat a wistful look and then reminded himself to look on the bright side: It could be a murder, Miss Fisher might be there wearing something new and daring.

Wondering how things got this out of hand (was this the lot of divorcés the world over or did she just have that effect on men? Also, stop thinking about hands, Jack, that’s not really helping) he answered the phone. “Robinson.”

The signal was terrible, as if it were trying to claw its way through frayed lines. On the other end of the line he could hear Collins talking very quickly, or at least he assumed he was talking. All he could really hear was the occasional word or syllable, adding up to, at Jack’s best guess, “Alarm, low, scream, Fisher.”

Which made no damn sense at all, but still had Jack’s heart climbing into his throat as his mind helpfully supplied filler words that essentially translated the sentence into “Miss Fisher has done something reckless again and is in danger.” It was the sort of phone call he spent half his days expecting, of course; also fully expecting whatever emergency she had thrown herself into to be resolved seconds before his arrival.

“I can’t hear you, Collins. Has something happened to Miss Fisher?”

More scratching and then just the word “low” repeated.

Not particularly helpful. Neither was the loud but extremely urgent scream that could suddenly be heard in the background. Before Jack could ask any further questions, the line was disconnected. He hung up.

Low?

And who was that screaming?

Low? Wardlow? 

Jack walked back and forth in his office twice, realised he was pacing and sat down, trying to at least pretend he wasn’t worried.

Sighing heavily he picked up the telephone and asked the operator to connect him to Wardlow. The woman returned not long after, informing him that there was no answer.

“Could you please try again, it’s a matter of some urgency,” Jack asked her, pinching the bridge of his nose. What on Earth would he say when Mr. Butler or Dot answered? The operator would undoubtedly be listening in, he couldn’t very well just say he was calling to ask if he had left his gloves there. The woman - who was frequently the one to transfer him when he made actual, real police work-related - would never take him seriously again when he used to the word ‘urgent’. 

It took somewhat longer for her to return to the line this time. “I’m afraid there’s still no answer,” she said. “I could try 347, it’s just a few houses down, I believe.”

“No, that’s fine,” Jack said, and moved to hang up, only remembering his manners just before he put the receiver down. “Thank you,” he called, bending his head awkwardly to still be heard, and then he ended the call, already getting out of his seat.

He drove to St. Kilda at a speed that might be considered reckless, hoping that he wouldn’t arrive too late for… whatever it was Collins had called him about. Or hoping that perhaps it would all be resolved by then and he could instead take his worry out on Collins, giving him a good scolding for visiting Miss Williams when he was meant to be patrolling the docks.

The docks.

The words curled themselves around the edge of his consciousness as he drove, but they didn’t manage to take hold of anything until he had reached Miss Fisher’s home. As he parked, he noticed that the front door was ajar. 

He ran up the garden path, storming into the house shouting her name.

There was no response, but then suddenly the silence was pierced by a scream, a sound unlike any other he had ever heard Miss Fisher make before. 

Something else tried to worm its way to the forefront of his mind. Something about the tenor of the scream, the way her voice faltered and then picked up volume again, but he was already halfway up the stairs before it even began to occur to him, and he had already pushed the door to her boudoir open before the realisation could begin to dawn on him.

*

Jack had lingered in front of her house for a few seconds, not sure if he was waiting for her to follow and berate him or hoping the ground would swallow him up. When neither happened, he eventually got in his car and drove back to City South. Going home just now seemed impossible; being alone was definitely a terrible idea.

Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was her, completely naked and sitting on her knees, her back arched in pleasure while some man’s head was… He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat at the vivid memory and somehow managed to miss a left turn, forcing him to drive around the block before he could make his way to the parking lot behind the station. Which was likely to be as deserted now as it was before he left it an hour ago. He really ought to bring this up with the chief commissioner at their next meeting. The stations ought to be manned at all hours.

For the good of the public, of course.

In no way was it for the good of Jack’s own sanity. 

He made his way through the building, his path familiar even in the near darkness. Back in his office, the lights - _all_ the lights, to make the place look less empty - now on, he stared for a few minutes at the stack of paperwork in front of him, wondering just what the point of all of this was.

The sound of her moaning just as he opened the door rang in his ears again. He was beginning to worry it was something he’d never forget. (He was slightly more worried that one day he would.)

Distraction. That’s what the point was.

Right.

He buckled down, absolutely refusing to think about the paleness of her skin or the curve of her waist or the birthmark on her lower back. He wasn’t thinking about any of these things at all as he worked his way through report after report on petty thefts and bar fights that had somehow turned serious enough to require constabulary intervention. Definitely not.

Nor was he thinking about the way her lipstick was smudged, her face flushed as she smiled at him.

He blinked, slowly.

By the time he had made it halfway through the stack of reports, the main entrance was suddenly thrown open with some force. For a mad second Jack thought it might be the man to whom those hairy legs belonged, here to defend Miss Fisher’s honour, but rather than anger all he could hear was… wetness?

Hugh Collins appeared in the doorway to his office, dripping with water and with bits of seaweed hanging off him. “Evening, Sir,” he said, his tone absurdly casual.

“Collins,” Jack said frostily. Well, the man wasn’t dead, so he could surely shoulder _some_ of the blame for what had happened to Jack.

“Sorry about earlier, Sir,” Collins went on, shifting his feet in the pool of water that was gathering around him. “There was a fight down at the docks between some workers and some fishermen and I thought backup might be necessary.”

Jack couldn’t help thinking that he looked like it had been. A hint of guilt crept up on him. Well, rather more than a hint, actually. “I’m sorry, Collins. I couldn’t hear you at all, I didn’t understand your message.”

Collins shrugged, wringing his uniform of even more water. “It alright, Sir. Some of the lads from City Central turned up.”

Great. Jack managed a strained smile. Not only had he suffered utter humiliation and failed to heed a constable’s call for assistance, now he’d have to hear about it for the rest of his career from Frank Bloody Crawford at City Central.

“Well, I’m very pleased to see that you were able to handle things, Collins,” Jack said, hoping a bit of praise would make up for his own failure.

Collins smiled brightly as if it actually did. 

“But perhaps you ought to take a shower and change into some drier clothes?”

Collins laughed nervously, looking down at the mess he had made, and nodded.

Only when Jack was back in his car, making his way home at a very respectable speed, did it occur to him to wonder just how Collins had made it from the docks to the station in the state he was in.

Was it too much to hope that he had been driven there in one of City Central’s police vehicles and had made as much of a mess of that as he had of Jack’s office floor?

*

Three days passed during which Jack most emphatically did not think about a naked Phryne Fisher, or imagined himself taking the place of the man who had been…

No, Jack didn’t think about that at all.

And then one morning, far too early for her daily routine and his comfort, she turned up, sauntering through the station and making her way to his office wearing a red dress and a pair of gloves that matched the hat placed jauntily on her head.

She paused for only a second in the doorway, her eyes meeting his, and then she walked around his desk, taking a seat in what Jack tried desperately not to think of as her usual spot on his desk, crossing her legs with a slowness that was as torturous to him as it was deliberate by her.

“Hello, Jack,” she said, smiling with barely contained amusement. 

“Miss Fisher,” he said, wondering how there was enough blood left to turn his ears red when so much of it was currently flowing elsewhere, and he found himself having to clear his throat before continuing. Not that he was thinking about reaching out to touch her legs, uncrossing them and… “How may I help you?”

Her smile grew even wider at that. Or possibly at his very obvious discomfort, he wasn’t sure. “I have a case for you.”

Jack relaxed slightly. _Very_ slightly. (She had shifted, her foot now dangling so close to him that every now and then he could feel her ankle brushing against the fabric of his trousers.) A case he could manage. They could argue over evidence, she could do something reckless, he could pretend to be angry with her over it and before he knew it he would stop thinking about running his tongue along… “A case?”

“Yes.” She started pulling off her gloves, clearly settling in for a long explanation. Jack shifted away from her slightly, wondering if it would seem too conspicuous if he crossed his own legs. “A few days ago I was… entertaining…” She trailed off briefly, letting the word sink in. He had no doubt it had been _that_. “And all of a sudden a man rushed in, pistol raised as if he meant to shoot someone, and then… he just left.”

Jack swallowed. “He did?”

“He did. And I can’t for the life of me work out why he was there. Or why he left so abruptly.”

He looked at her sharply. She was still smiling, her lips curled up teasingly. Her lipstick was immaculate and he thought about how he could smudge it up. “Perhaps he had been led to believe that there was an emergency, but when he found that that wasn’t the case he decided not to… outstay his welcome,” he suggested, somehow managing to sound a lot more detached than he felt.

“An emergency in my boudoir?”

“Clearly that’s not what… that was,” he hurried to explain, stumbling over his words as her amusement grew. 

“No,” she agreed. “And Jack.” She looked him straight in the eye, still playful but also somehow, not. “You are always welcome in my boudoir, but in future it might be better if you knocked?”

He nodded, not sure what to say, or whether he’d be able to come out with more than a croak if he did try to speak.

She uncrossed her legs as if it were a carefully choreographed dance move and jumped off his desk. As she was leaving she paused in the doorway and turned around to look at him, her fingers wrapped around the handle. “See you soon, Jack.”

“Goodbye, Miss Fisher,” he replied, able to smile at her now that she was at a safe distance. (Safe for whom, he wasn’t entirely sure.)

She left, closing the door behind her, and Jack went back to his paperwork immediately, spending no part of the day pondering the word ‘soon’, or the swaying of her hips, or just how those hips would look with that red dress pooled around them as he leaned her back on his desk and thrust into her until she moaned the way he had heard her do three days ago.

He didn’t think about that at all, and as Phryne drove back to Wardlow she didn’t think about it either.


End file.
